


Icarus Rising

by CobaltStargazer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/M, Friendship, Guilt, Love, Protective Clint Barton, Scientist Shuri (Marvel), Wakandan Technology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-06-09 17:25:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19480591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/pseuds/CobaltStargazer
Summary: Once there was a boy who went away to war and lost himself. A long time later, he tries to rebuild.





	1. Chapter 1

Hands.

Hands on his chest, which was warm. The hands were also warm, he could feel them through the thin gloves. There was a light overhead. A fluorescent bulb, not sunshine, because he couldn't feel the warmth of it.

He was awake. Why was he awake?

"Relax, Sergeant. If I had known they'd put you under while I was away, I would have given instructions to revive you before I returned, so you'd have time to acclimate to being conscious."

Female voice, accented English. Small hands. He couldn't see, his eyes had been covered with something. Gauze? Bandages? Was he injured again? The hands moved, and he felt the cool metal of a stethoscope touch his chest. 

_Doctors._

He flinched away from it, muddy memories floating to the surface. Electricity and pain, chains no one could see, the fishhook inside his mind. She'd called him Sergeant. He tried to get up, to move before they hurt him again. More voices, male this time. Wakanda. He was still in Wakanda, wasn't he?

"He's very dangerous, Your Highness."

"Yes. Yes, he is."

He could hear the steady _beep-beep-beep_ of a cardiac monitor, and his single hand latched onto the railing attached to the cryonic device. One of the hands that had been gently probing his rib cage moved, touched his forearm. A sharp intake of breath somewhere to his left, and his sightless eyes darted in that direction. 

"Your Highness, you _mustn't_ touch him. He is very...."

"Yes, yes, very dangerous, I heard you."

He heard exasperation, could almost see the eyeroll. She sounded young, and when he swung his shaggy head back towards her, he let go of the rail and raised his hand to the covering over his eyes. It felt like cloth, but denser. He could feel her watching him. 

"Why can't I see?"

It came out mushy, _shee_ instead of _see_ , and she replied, "It's a precaution, Sergeant. They should have covered your eyes before they put you in the chamber. Cryonics is unpredictable, though I've worked out most of the bugs. I should have left instructions. Not that anyone ever _pays attention._ "

Not just exasperation now, but annoyance. He relaxed, because it wasn't directed at him, but he only relaxed a fraction. Because it might be later. The noise from the heart monitor slowed to a more sedate pace. 

"What's going to happen to me?"

There was a silence, and inside it he could hear the hum and beep of medical equipment, instruments being put away. The noise of a sterilizer starting. This time, the touch on his forearm was brief, a pat instead of a grasp, no matter how gentle. He looked down, made a frustrated noise at not being able to see her.

"I'm going to fix what's broken, though it will take time. Whoever created this programming did a thorough job, and I suspect they're no longer around to question them about how to undo it. Some of this code is decades old, but...yes. I can fix what's broken. I can fix you."

"Fix me."

His voice was dull, because he knew better. That was why he'd gone back under, to keep from hurting anyone else. He'd wanted to sleep, sleep forever. The damage done wasn't something that could be fixed. He knew it even if this girl, whoever she was, didn't.

"Rest now, Sergeant. I'll have you moved in an hour or so. There is much to be done, and I apologize for not making preparations in advance. I was not informed beforehand. In the future, I'll be handling this much more closely."

Behind the cloth that wasn't cloth, he closed his eyes. One of the blessings of cryo was that there had been no dreams. No nightmares. Now that he was awake, he knew they'd come back, that the dead would find him. 

It was what he deserved.


	2. Chapter 2

He must have slept, because when he stirred again the room was quiet. Not silent, but there were no beeps from medical apparatus or voices whispering about how volatile and dangerous he was. He'd been moved, then. There had been no dreams. His arm ached, a steady centralized throb near his shoulder. Had someone given him a shot? Not for infection, certainly, and hardly a vitamin booster. Physically, he was as healthy as the proverbial horse. It was mentally and emotionally that he was a wreck. He still couldn't see, though the almost-cloth had been removed and replaced.

There was someone in the room with him. 

Even blindfolded, he became aware of it fairly quickly, a nearly animal sense he'd developed over the years he'd been alive. People were either threats or targets, and sometimes they were both. He turned his head to the right, then to the left, regulating his breathing.

"Who's there?"

"It's just me, James."

 _James._ That was his name, wasn't it, though no one had used it in a very long time. Probably not since his parents had been alive. He sifted through the mess that passed for his memory, looking for their faces. Or at least the name belonging to the voice that had answered him.

"I can't..."

"Wanda."

He didn't answer her, and she didn't say anything else. She'd been at the airport, he remembered that much. He lay quiet, heard her shift in the chair close to the bed. His good hand moved, touched what should have been the prosthetic, but all he made contact with was a bandaged stump. What was _left_ of the arm he'd been born with. He started, sat up, his protected eyes narrowing in a glare.

"What did they do to me?!"

"The arm was destroyed. Most of it, anyway. I don't know enough about it to go into detail, but what was left was removed while you were still under. That's all they told me."

He remembered that too, his arm detaching from his body when he tried to pry the arc reactor out of Stark's suit. Fighting, always fighting. He lay back down, moving at half-speed. Looked blindly up at the ceiling. His shoulder throbbed. They'd definitely injected him with something.

"Didn't have to do that." Sounding sulky.

Wanda made a noise that might have been amusement, and she closed her fist as the crimson light faded. She'd wanted to be here when he woke up so he could be with someone at least half-familiar...and because she could contain him without injury if she had to. She settled back in the chair, tucked her feet underneath her.

"Where's the other one?"

"Which 'other one'?"

"Uh..."

He waved his hand around in the air, the piecemeal memories of the few days before he went back into cryo colliding with what he knew of his current situation. Like before, he could feel the girl looking at him. Wanda. Her name was Wanda.

"I don't know what her name is. Her Highness. The one who said she could..."

He fumbled around for the two small words, couldn't make himself say them. It would have sounded too much like belief. Like hope.

"Mmm."

It was just a noise. Wanda was not a stupid girl, and if even half of what she'd heard in bits and pieces was the truth, there was every reason for the man on the bed to remain here for the duration. However long a duration was. But when she spoke, her accented voice held an odd sort of kindness.

"I don't know, James. It would probably take hours to investigate this place without knowing exactly what you were looking for, but I did see her earlier, on her way back to the medbay. So she'll be by to see you, I'm sure."

She'd called him James twice now, and he decided he didn't mind. It was better than _Sergeant_ , possibly even better than _Bucky_. He wanted to sleep again. Whatever he'd been given, it must have repressed the dreams. He wanted to take advantage of that while he could.

"I'm tired."

"All right. It's past midnight anyway, so I should be in bed myself. I just didn't want you to be alone."

' _I just didn't want you to be alone._ '

Kindness. It had been so Goddamn long since anyone other than Steve had been kind to him that his throat was suddenly thick with the realization of it. He could feel his eyes threatening to tear, didn't know how it would affect the material shielding his vision. He turned away from where he thought the door was, his hair falling into his face as he rolled onto his other side. The fresh dressing on the stump of his arm was very white against the dark cloth of his loose-fitting shirt.

She watched him for another minute, couldn't help but notice that he was like a puppy who was waiting to be kicked again. Or maybe a caged wolf who was just looking for the latch to the gate. She remembered laboratories and nosebleeds that wouldn't stop and wounds that never scarred over. And unlike her, he hadn't volunteered for it.

"Sleep, James. You're safe here."

He could almost believe it. Because he wasn't looking at her.


	3. Chapter 3

Some time passed, though he didn't know how much. Before, it was either day or night, the sun was up or it was dark. They kept him under unless he was in the field, so it didn't matter what time it was. It was hard to acclimate to actual hours and minutes when whole days could go by without realizing it.

He'd been given his own room, and when he woke up, he was alone. There was sunshine coming in through the window, he could feel the warmth of it. He touched the bandage where the prosthetic used to be, the covering over his eyes. In those first terrible days after he was taken, the place where his real arm ended itched, even under the arm they gave him. He'd go to scratch in the brief times he was conscious and aware of himself, try to relieve the itch and be surprised to find metal instead of flesh. That passed with the years, the way not knowing what time it was passed.

"Is anyone there?"

He grasped the edge of the mattress with his remaining hand. A big man who could move very slow or very fast, and even though he couldn't see he had enough spatial awareness that he could map out the furniture. Bed, nightstand, chair where Wanda had been sitting earlier. He flattened his palm against the wall, took careful steps towards the natural heat source of the sun. His feet were bare, he could feel the carpet against his soles. He wondered where his boots were, a random thought that blipped across his consciousness and disappeared.

He stopped at the window, put his palm to the glass. Either a table or a desk, another chair to go with it. The glass was warm, and he gauged that it was late morning or early afternoon. There was a modicum of light visible through the durable material shielding his vision. He rapped on the window with his knuckles. Reinforced glass, but no bars or chain link on the outside. 

Not a cage, then. Not a prison cell, since even cells could be carpeted and furnished. He reached out until he touched the back of the chair at the desk, lowered his weight into it. So they weren't going to leave him like this. Blind at the least, one-armed at the most, though at the moment he felt _just_ fine about the lack of the prosthetic. Of all the things Hydra had done to him, replacing the living flesh of his arm with a weapon was the worst, because it made the programming so much more dangerous. He could feel the Soldier crawling around inside his skull right now, a malignant revenant who lay beneath the surface of his befuddlement, the confusion he so often felt at how much time had gone by since those early, innocent days. Or if not innocent, then not...

Murderous.

_Am I something - someone - who deserves to be fixed?_

It didn't feel true when he thought it, and he knew that there were people who would agree with his disagreement. Tony Stark was the least of the people he'd hurt, whose life he had wrecked just by existing. As he sat there in the chair, the sun coming through the clean glass to splash across his shirt, he felt the guilt of the blood-stained decades behind him and wondered what future could possibly lie ahead. If he merited _having_ a future.

The first voice he'd heard on becoming aware that he was no longer frozen had held confidence, the assured quality of someone who knew exactly what she was capable of. And he couldn't deny that he yearned to be free of the whispering voice that was never quiet, who hammered and taunted and mocked him, showed him the images of his good work, _Hydra's_ good work, that he'd done so well.

He wanted it, wanted to be free, wanted to be...safe. 

He just didn't know if it was possible, or if he deserved to be given that freedom.


	4. Chapter 4

She'd watched him sleep.

Not sleep. She'd watched him in stasis, lying inside the cryo-chamber she'd built when she was seventeen. Waiting for her return, at least in a sense.

Shuri had been on a goodwill mission when her brother contacted her to say that the Sergeant was not, in fact, responsible for the death of their father, that he'd been a pawn in a much larger game. That it had begun with the bombing that killed T'Chaka and ended with the sundering of the Avengers, leaving Barnes still wanted by the authorities and considered dangerous. Not without reason. That he'd not only entered a state of suspension willingly but insisted on it was evidence enough that whatever he'd been implanted with was still a factor. 

Hydra had never been able to infiltrate Wakanda, though they'd tried at various points over the years. Partly due to their isolationist nature, partly because of their technological advancements, not all of which Shuri was responsible for or had improved on. But the cryo-unit was the first thing she'd worked on entirely by herself, had installed in her lab after building it. She wasn't sure she'd ever expected to see it used, though, not this way.

His neural scans proved normal, but she'd studied some of the book Captain Rogers had left behind. Even without first hand experience with Hydra's methods, the time it must have taken to enforce total control of a human subject was perversely impressive. Shuri had been deemed a prodigy as a child, and in her young adulthood she spoke a dozen languages fluently, understood computers and biology, and worked with science advanced beyond some NASA projects, but she'd never dealt with will suppression before. Had never wanted to. 

Like T'Challa, she'd been devastated by the death of their father, had returned home in a state of shock for the ceremonial burial. Had he not sworn to avenge the king's murder, she might have taken up arms herself, though she was not next in line to inherit either the throne or the mantle of Wakanda's protector. She'd retreated somewhat into her work, taking solace in new discoveries, but she'd kept one eye on the matter. Her brother may have been the heir, but she would not have remained idle if the person responsible hadn't been punished.

And now?

She'd read the book, or _some_ of the book. A small volume bound in red leather with a star on the cover. Like the star that had been on the prosthetic she'd removed, the arm so damaged that there was no choice but to take the rest of it. Start over from scratch, and this time help instead of hurt. Because someone - not just her angry brother, but her or the civilian authorities or someone from any government agency who'd taken an interest in the sergeant - would have been quite happy to put an end to him.

She'd also watched him at rest, wondered if he dreamed or if his 'sleep' was quiet in cryo. He'd looked like a fallen king, one of the paintings or sculptures she'd seen so many of in her history books and the museums she'd visited. She was not immune to that sort of attractiveness, despite her youth and that she had yet to find someone to match her intellectually. 

Shuri had covered his eyes herself before rousing him. All of the tests she'd run said that Barnes was as hale and hearty as anyone, but optic nerves were delicate. While she'd never worked with human subjects before, she'd taken as many precautions as she could once she realized the process had started without her being present. ' _I can fix you._ , she'd said, as if he was a holographic device or one of her brother's battle droids, but armed with the book and her own research, she had a toehold in the mountain undoing Hydra's work represented. It would take work, but the sergeant was only one of many victims. 

She'd heard the confusion and frustration in his voice before she'd had him moved, and she'd gathered from their other guests that he would be upset to find out that Captain Rogers had departed. But she felt confident that she could restore some semblance of normalcy to his life, or if not normalcy then at least render the programming defunct. He'd been both victimizer and the victimized long before she was born, but she'd made a promise, if a slightly arrogant one. ' _I can fix you._

Not a noble cause, perhaps, but...a necessary one.


	5. Chapter 5

"Good morning, Sergeant."

"Your Highness."

He was sitting very straight in the wheelchair someone had brought for him, his remaining hand on the rest. It was daytime. He knew because someone else had brought him breakfast; eggs, toast, sausage, bacon, coffee. Plenty of everything, though he knew that whoever had brought him the food had remained close by, both to clear away the dishes and to watch him eat. He suspected that they'd either been warned or just knew without asking who he was, that he could be dangerous. Was unpredictable. Unstable. 

"Shuri, please. We don't stand _as_ much on formality here, at least not in private. 'Your Highness' is only a ceremonial title."

It took him a moment to realize she was giving him permission to use her name, and his sightless eyes turned in her direction, following the muted noise of her movements. The covering had been changed that morning, after he was wheeled in but before she arrived. There was no telltale hospital smell in here, but he knew it was at the least a functional laboratory. He wondered if she had a staff, assistants to help her. ' _Not that anyone pays attention._ '

"When do I get to see again?"

"I'll be removing the bandaging in a few days, possibly a week. Given how long you've been incapacitated over the years, how often, I'm amazed your sight hasn't been compromised long before this."

He said nothing, and he said nothing because he didn't want to tell her that his eyes weren't what had interested Hydra the most. They'd kept him alive with major surgery after the fall, but after that he'd been little more than a tool in their arsenal. But she probably _did_ know that, and so he remained silent.

"Did you give me something? An injection?"

"Yes. Our war dogs often have trouble sleeping after returning from missions, so I started work on a serum for dream suppression. Psychotropic drugs are commonly used in therapy, and if it helps them, there's no reason it can't help you."

"War dogs."

It was a statement, and he heard her turn away from whatever she was doing. When she spoke, there was a note of rueful amusement under the words. "Yes, well...they've been called that since long before I was born, and some things _do_ stand the test of time."

Something that might have been the ghost of a smile touched his mouth, and as she looked into his unseeing face she felt something close to pity. There was a person underneath the wreckage, she could see him struggling to free himself, but how long could you stay buried without being permanently marked? His shoulders lost some of their starch, but not all of it.

"You didn't have to take my arm."

"I did, actually. The prosthetic was damaged beyond repair, and after some inspection of what was left, I decided I should start from scratch, with something of my own design."

There was a pause while Shuri arranged some medical implements on a tray, the quiet clink of metal on metal the only noise. Later there would be more tests that involved and MRI in addition to more complex study, but for now she wanted to see what his mental state was. His _emotional_ state. She was not a psychiatrist, but she'd seen the effects of battle on their warriors, was using that as a template to help the man who sat in the wheelchair. Even if it wasn't a mirror image, there were enough similarities.

"Did you enjoy your breakfast, Sergeant? American fare isn't a specialty, but our kitchen staff has varied knowledge of cuisine. I..."

"Don't call me that."

He surprised himself by saying it, though he could sense no harm in her. With as many years as he'd spent with no free will to refuse orders, he'd still developed a keen sense for who might hurt him and who wouldn't. This girl - because he could hear the youth in her voice, the optimism that she could do anything she set her mind to - almost seemed to have _no_ knowledge of who he was, the things he'd done. He pushed his hand through his shaggy hair.

"I don't...the breakfast was fine. But I don't want to be called Sergeant anymore. Please."

There was another silence, and he shifted in the chair. Uncomfortable, nervous, with that same damn itch that had plagued him off and on over the years, even though he no longer even had the metal arm. He rubbed at the bandage over the stump, the calluses on his palm making a brushing sound on the fabric.

"Would you prefer Bucky?"

"I would if I knew who that was."

He looked down at his lap, the fingers of his only hand making small pleats in the cloth of his loose-fitting pants, then smoothing them out again. He remembered being on a bridge; traffic sounds, the overcast sky, the wind on his face because the mask had come off. Steve. That was the first time in a long time the fog had lifted while he was in the field, no matter how briefly. 

' _Who the hell's Bucky?_ '

He still didn't know the answer.

"James, then?"

She was looking at him again, and it was compassion instead of pity now. She _did_ know some of it, and she didn't have to be a psychiatrist to read the unhappiness in his expression, his posture. Despite her youth, despite the relative isolation of Wakanda, Shuri had a firm grasp on certain realities. His shoulders had lost some more of their starch.

"I guess."

Because they had to call him _something_ , didn't they? For a while when he was living in Bucharest, he would get mail addressed to 'Occupant'. Catalogs, mostly, and he'd be dimly amused at the idea that a mailing list would be so far-reaching that it could find even him. But at night he'd look at the label and think, _That's me. Occupant. Nameless, faceless, historyless._ And the idea that total anonymity might not be so bad was the best and the worst thought he would have all day. 

But they had to call him something. He didn't like 'Sergeant', 'Soldier' was out of the question, and he still didn't know who 'Bucky' was. Or had been. He wasn't used to being offered choices yet, but this was a small one. He rubbed the spot where his arm used to be again, nodded.

"Yeah, James is fine. I haven't heard it in a long time, but...I'll get used to it."

Shuri nodded, though it didn't escape her attention that he seemed resigned rather than pleased. But there was still much to be done, so she decided it would be unwise to push. If it took him a minute to decide what he'd like to be called, it was a very small step.

But any start was better than no start at all.


End file.
